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New Worst Regular This Season
by PuckStopsHere on 12/03/09 at 11:15 AM ET
Comments (13)
As the season progresses, I try to pick out the player who is playing the worst who is regularly getting dressed by an NHL team. It is frequently a hard working player who is well liked by coaches and teammates, but isn’t succeeding on the ice. In the middle of November, I picked Brad Richardson of the Los Angeles Kings as that player. He is a hard working player who was not having any success either offensively or defensively. He had a successful game against Anaheim this week where he scored his first two points (a goal and an assist) so far this season. That is enough to move him out of that position. In the NHL, there is generally a very small difference between the worst several players in the league. Each of the bottom players on a team’s roster are essentially interchangeable with another player who is outside the NHL. It is hard to find a significant difference in their effectiveness as players. It is hard to rank one as worse that another. Limited success for any player who might be considered the worst so far this season is enough to remove him from the race. Given how the worst players in the league are roughly interchangeable with players outside the league, it is interesting to see why some of the worst players continue to get NHL time. Often these players are goons who play limited minutes against weak opposition and still fail to score and prevent scoring. That is the case with my current selection for the worst regular so far this year in the NHL - Andrew Peters of the New Jersey Devils.
Peters has appeared in 17 games so far this year for the Devils. He is yet to score any points. He has a -5 +/- rating, which is second worst on the team. He has done this is very limited playing time. Peters averages a little over five and a half minutes of playing time a game. He plays against very weak opposition. He faces the weakest quality of opponents of any player on the New Jersey Devils (and by a significant margin). Peters dresses regularly, but is used in few situations (which are in the “easy” minutes of the game) and fails to score and fails to prevent scoring. Peters is a well liked teammate. He is a hard worker. He is a goon, who is second in penalty minutes on the Devils with 25. That is what keeps him in the lineup (possibly coupled with injuries - if the Devils get healthy will Peters get scratched?).
Andrew Peters is a veteran goon. He has been in the NHL since 2003/04. He has been a frequent healthy scratch throughout his career. He has played 217 games over five complete (and the partial 2009/10) seasons on an NHL roster. During that time he has scored seven points and spent 582 minutes in the penalty box. He is a good guy to have in the locker room. He works hard. He is willing to put his body on the line to fight anyone. He just does not play hockey well. That makes him a good example of the worst regular in the NHL. In fact, he is more likely to lose this distinction by no longer being a regular (either through frequent healthy scratching or a trip to the minors) than he is to suddenly start playing better hockey and become an offensively or defensively important member of the New Jersey Devils.
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Tags: Andrew+Peters, Brad+Richardson, New+Jersey+Devils,
Comments
Peters has played in the last eight straight games for the Devils. That is being used as a regular.
Showing that a winning team has a winning record when some player appears for a little over five minutes a game against poor competition is one of the most outlandish attempted uses of statistics I have seen in my blog comments ever. New Jersey is 10-6-1 when they dress Peters and 7-1-0 when they scratch him. If there is a conclusion (and there probably isn’t because of the lack of meaningful minutes played by Peters) it is that New Jersey is worse with him in the lineup than when he is scratched.
Posted by PuckStopsHere on 12/03/09 at 02:23 PM ET
So your talking about a guy who is only making 1/2 a million salary wise…By the way sometimes Jacques puts him out there against the other teams top lines. Im not calling Peters a great hockey player but he does his job well and is not a locker room cancer and sticks up for his teammates
Posted by Huff&Puff; from Blackberry on 12/03/09 at 02:47 PM ET
Against poor competition? Peters has played in 17 games. In 10 of those 17 games he has played against a team that has 30 or more points.
I’m just suprised of all guys in the NHL, Peters was your pick. Jason Blake could be under the category you discussed although he does have 14pts
Posted by Hockey Fan from Computer on 12/03/09 at 02:49 PM ET
Quality of competition is a well quantified statistic. Here are the current results for the New Jersey Devils. Andrew Peters is last and well below Cory Murphy who is second last. Here is something I once wrote explaining the methodology of this statistic’s calculation.
Posted by PuckStopsHere on 12/03/09 at 02:54 PM ET
Sounds to me like Puck Stops here is some loser who was never able to crack the line-up in pee wee hockey.
Posted by Doug on 12/03/09 at 05:23 PM ET
Peters is the worst Devils regular in recent memory and one of the worst hockey players I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t even hit people, unless he’s playing against the Sens…. I guess still holding a grudge. of course, when he hits, he injures two players… and then proceeds to not hit anyone since. Huh?
last night he screwed up a simple “get to the redline and clear” on a linechange.
Daniel Sedin then proceeded to score the 3rd goal of the game.
he played two shifts in one game. and still got a minus. horrible player who can’t do anything offensively, doesn’t even understand what’s going on in his own end, refuses to hit even when his hits CRUSHED people, and really hasn’t fought very often, and one of his fights was after a goal WE scored and was a total momentum kill.
luckily, his days as a Devil should be over soon and he can earn the rest of his one-way deal somewhere else.
Posted by arrrrgghhhh on 12/03/09 at 11:53 PM ET
btw, if the Devils are 10-7 in the games Peters played in, that means they’re either 7-1 or 7-0-1 in the games he hasn’t played in, depending on whether you’re counting all loses as a regular loss.
so, you’re kinda proving his point.
Posted by arrrgghhh on 12/03/09 at 11:57 PM ET
I have to agree with this assessment: Peters really is a terrible player. For someone his size, you would think that he’d be able to at least box out smaller defensemen along the boards and maintain some decent puck possession, but he can’t. He’s too big for most players to fight against so even when he goes looking for a fight he usually gets turned down, making him nothing but a liability. Even when he DOES fight, it’s usually some staredowns, a few left-hand jersey-jabs, maybe one or two sloppy rights and then it’s over. Just yesterday against Vancouver, Burrows was heard on the ice-level microphone telling Peters something along the lines of “stay on the ice, we love it when you’re playing”... This was after the Peters line had been chasing the puck around the Devils zone for a while leading to a penalty.
We’ve had some 4th liners who weren’t great players - Cam Janssen had almost no hockey skill but he justified his spot in the lineup with his energetic crash and bang style. You could actually put him on the ice and it wasn’t a disaster because you knew that at least he would create some energy. With Peters, if he’s not fighting, he’s doing nothing. Rarely finishes his checks (or rather, rarely puts himself in an intelligent position to create hitting opportunities despite his monstrous size). He starts the game on the 4th line and almost always ends up benched, with Parise getting 1st+4th line duty on the wing. The bad thing is that our other fighters are Clarkson (recently injured by Chara’s unfair slapshot) and Salvador (one of our few healthy NHL regular defensemen who is effectively eating lots of minutes - don’t want him risking a hand injury in a fight). At this point, if we’re going to play someone who’s not good offensively or defensively I’d prefer Leblond - he’s not quite as big but at least he finishes his checks and gets the team going with some energy.
Andrew Peters really is the worst in the NHL. Devils fans know it and hate seeing him on the ice. Sabres fans know it and are glad to see him gone. I went to college in nearby Buffalo and have a lot of hockey-fan friends there; nobody likes him there either. How Lou signed him to a multi-year contract, I will never know.
Posted by Josh from NY on 12/04/09 at 01:29 AM ET
PSH is right. Anyone who disagrees is either a hardcore devils fan or his parents.
Posted by tacks on 12/04/09 at 08:56 AM ET
Nope, Devils fans hate him too. Andrew Peters could make a high school varsity team.
Posted by John on 12/04/09 at 10:10 AM ET
...is one of the most outlandish attempted uses of statistics I have seen in my blog comments ever.
Then it’s perfectly fitting in a blog that is solely based on outlandish uses of stats.
Posted by John W. from a bubble wrap cocoon on 12/05/09 at 12:18 AM ET
three more games Peters hasn’t played in, three more games the Devils have won. the fourth line, which was probably the worst in the entire league, unless the Leafs cloned Colton Orr and put two more of him on the other wing and at center… actually looks halfway decent now and can maintain puck possession.
I think we can move on from Peters as the “worst regular this season” and now move on to prior years and try to find his place in the history of crappy hockey players.
Posted by arrrggghhh on 12/08/09 at 01:32 AM ET
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Playing in 17 of the team’s 25 games does not make Peters a regular (8 healthy scratches). Plus the Devils are 10-7 when he’s in the lineup, so I’m not so sure where you got Peters from, but what ever floats your boat.
Posted by Hockey Fan from Computer on 12/03/09 at 02:15 PM ET